Crying over Nigel’s Toast with Nigella’s rapid ragu

Last week on BBC iPlayer I blubbed my way, from start, almost to finish, through the dramatised version of Nigel Slater’s childhood autobiography, Toast.

Nigel’s beloved but culinarily challenged mother died when he was around 10 years old with his father remarrying the blousy cleaner soon after. He disliked his step mother but her effortless triumphs in the kitchen set him on the course to become a chef.

Young Nigel was played by the adorable Oscar Kennedy. I think it was the combination of watching his splendid performance, imagining my own little boy being left on his own and a close friend having lost his mother at the same age that really got to me. Either that or the Dusty Springfield tracks played throughout.

Is it just me or do lots of us have horrid childhood food memories of some sort? I have plenty of good ones but they are balanced with the bad. Warm third pint milk bottles stabbed with thin green straws (I didn’t quite vomit all over the teacher like the young Nigel Slater but I came extremely close). I also shared Nigel’s memories of dinners of incinerated fish, in my case fish fingers – my mother stands accused here and will deny all knowledge in the comments below. But most unforgettably, my father unintentionally using emotional blackmail that the canned sardine in tomato sauce on my plate would have “died for nothing” if I didn’t eat it. It’s a wonder I didn’t become vegetarian over night.

As a teenager given free range in my father’s glorious (sarcasm alert) kitchen I regularly concocted a bolognaise sauce of some description into which I would throw pretty much anything. Unable to cook much else but desperate to avoid the threatened combination of watercress and canned sardine in tomato sauce that were the frequent alternative, I’d pretend to be a grown up in Safeway and come back with bags of mince, onions and five varieties of tinned vegetable. Baked beans were usually included. And grated cheese. Fortunately my father was a great deal more appreciative than Nigel’s eternally grumpy dad as portrayed by Ken Stott.

Now Nigella Lawson’s Rapid Ragu may sound a darn sight more stylish with it’s panetta and canned puy lentils but it’s not a million miles from those meaty (and slightly freaky) pasta sauces I used to cook up on the kind of cooker that now belongs in the Geffrye Museum.

With Ted’s “help” I brewed up a Rapid Ragu using some pancetta left over from Christmas. It also features my favourite caramelised onions from Waitrose.

It’s an aromatic blend of cumin, mustard seeds, paprika and chilli and I look forward to rubbing it into steaks next. Kavey had the lovely idea of giving us all a bag of spices to concoct a special dish to mark our get together. I still have plenty left so this won’t be the last you see of it.

Here’s a view below without the cheese. You can get the recipe from Nigella.com , my only amendment has been to throw in a generous quantity of Kavey’s hunter’s spice mix.

Pssst! It’s the last couple of days to submit your entry to my new blog challenge Forever Nigella!

Comments

Great post! I cried like a baby too. The saddest bits for me were when he so desperately tried to make the bolognese for his mum and Dad and they didn’t eat it, the mother trying to make the mince pies with him just before she died and when he bought the fish for his dad with his pocket money and then it burnt. I’d read the book but I think they did it really well.

Even though I knew Nigel Slater’s story, when I watched Simple Suppers the other night (coveting his kitchen)and saw him in his garden, it made a lot of sense.

My own bugbears growing up were liver and onions. I think I was served them two or three times in a row. Cruel!

I must admit I laughed when his dad said the powdered parmesan smelled “like sick” because actually that stuff in tubs does and bears no resemblance to real the real thing. My mother used to serve it all the time… another thing I can tease her about, well it was the 80s.

OK I admit it. I used to burn the fish fingers – (done under the grill as its better for you) I then used to turn them over to hide the burnt bits, apparantly under the illusion that my poor child wouldn’t notice. In my defence I was a quite young mother, and the trouble with motherhood is you can’t go back and have another go. Is it any wonder my offspring turns out to be the fabulous cook that she is, with the gorgeous Teddy following in her footsteps as an apprentice.

Before its mentioned can I state that “the dead cat incident” whilst nothing to do with cooking, was also “for her own good” xxx

Loved Toast & cried and cried! Will never look at our Nige in the same way again!
Luckily for me, my mother was an amazing cook & I’m still trying desperately to be half as good as her … 37 years later!! Me? I’m married to a man who’s ‘take me to bed forever’ meal would be ham, egg & chips, so I’m a goddess to him no matter what I burn, I mean cook!!!
Anyway – I’ll just stick to cupcakes!!

Really? You really loved ‘Toast’? Ok…I love Nigel Slater, I loved the book, I loved the actors, the acting was superb (especially Oscar,& Helena B-C)…but I felt (and still feel) that he actually came across as a bit of an embittered nasty little piece of work! Especially as I know that Nigel is not, in fact, an only child…so he wasn’t alone in all of this. Is it just me…but I actually felt sorry for Mrs Potter. What was her great crime, really? Cooking beautifully and desperate for the son of the man she loved to like her? It’s terrible for any child to lose a mother so young…but not Mrs P’s fault (especially when Nigel grew up) I think it came across as a bit of a snobby thing, didn’t do him any favours at all! Anyway,I love your blog, love Nigella, AND I love Nigel…just think he should have given his Dad & Mrs Potter a break and had a bit of empathy! Rachel x

I’ve not read the book but I did sense watching it that the characters were painted more extreme than they probably were. It made for excellent telly though. I did feel sorry for Mrs Potter at several points, especially at the mason’s dinner.

I’m glad to see that I’m in the majority in blubbing all the way through Toast! When my Mum & Dad married Dad used to come home from work and ask ‘What’s burnt for tea tonight?’! But Mum was only 16 and her own Mum classed a packet of biscuits as an appropriate tea! Luckily my other Nan was fab and taught us both to cook 🙂

My Dad’s ‘Fridge Casserole’ is stil etched in my mind though – take one casserole dish, empty the fridge into it, bake for 2 hours and serve to two horrified little girls LOL!

Damn – I wanted to see Toast but missed it. I love Nigel Slater to bits so definitely have to try and get hold of it! I don’t realyl have terrible childhood food memories – dislikes, yes (banana, guava, pawpaw – blech!) but not realyl terrible memories. My mom used to make a cheesy egg dish – hard-boiled eggs, peeled, cut in half and laid in a single layer in a baking dish, to be topped with bechamel sauce and cheese and grilled. For some reason, by brother and I took against it and every time my mom said we were having it for lunch we went into contortions of disgust. It’s so funny thinking about it now – after all that we’d eat it and it was never as bad as we imagined… but oh boy how we complained!

I’m ashamed to say I didn’t watch (all of) Toast, though I have it recorded. I was crying within the first fifteen minutes. Clearly you can sense his mother will die and with my own boy only being three and a half I just couldn’t watch it! I must pluck up some courage and watch the rest, I just felt it was the kind of programme that would turn me into an uncontrollable blubbering wreck! I love Nigella’s rapid Ragu, the lentils are a great addition by her. Will make it again soon. I agree, amazing pics. And how lovely that your Mum comments on your blog in a positive way, not Julie and Julia style – “Why are you still writing this nonsense!”

Hmm, I appear to be in the minority. I have no bad food memories from my childhood, other than occasions where I gorged myself to the point of sickness (and allergy, in the case of fruit), but I don’t think that’s the same thing.
I feel the same way about Nigel Slater as I do about one of my old bosses: can’t stand him, but I respect the fact that he’s good at what he does. I read ‘Toast’ when off sick once and the step-mum was portrayed negatively, but humanely in prose. The TV adapation just made her into a caricature of a step-mother. There are some interesting counterpoints on this in an interview with her daughters in the Daily Mail: http://is.gd/6LqCsQ

Oooh that ragu looks fabulous! I think I’ll make something like that this week. I have many horrid food memories from childhood as my mom not only hated to cook but wasn’t very good either. Thank heavens for all that great Space Age packaged, boxed, frozen, canned stuff and the cool recipes my sister brought home from Girl Scouts.

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